... and the winner of the Assembly Engineering Innovation Award 2018 is:

Niklas Minsch, Daimler AG

Congratulations!

The 2018 Assembly Engineering conference was the first time that the Automotive Circle bestowed the Assembly Engineering Innovation Award. We are very pleased at this opportunity to honor the best and most inspiring innovations from the serial production of leading automotive manufacturers.

The automotive sector stands on the threshold of long-term changes which will not stop at the doors of the assembly line. The need for greater adaptability and flexibility will be especially apparent in final assembly – the last link in the automobile industry’s value chain. Alternative drive forms and an accelerating trend towards ever more customised product variants make it inevitable that traditional assembly processes will soon be replaced.

But what will these new, flexible and adaptable assembly processes look like in practice for automobile manufacturers?What features will state-of-the-art logistics concepts require to accommodate adaptable assembly processes? Which technologies and automation tools can we use to support assembly?What aids are available to help workers in the factory and what benefits do they offer? And how will testing and inspection procedures change to cope with rising complexity and guarantee continuing high product quality in the future?

The "Assembly Engineering 2018” conference that took place in Bad Nauheim on 20-21 February 2018 offered answers to these vital questions. Once again, it provided a high calibre forum of 85 engineers for further discussion of the key issues faced by the industry with practical lectures and presentations of the latest project results and advances made by leading OEMs, suppliers and research institutes.